George William Childs
American publisher (1829-1894)
George William Childs (May 12, 1829 – February 3, 1894) was an American publisher who co-owned the Public Ledger newspaper in Philadelphia with financier Anthony Joseph Drexel.
Early life
Childs was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on May 12, 1829, the illegitimate son of unidentified parents. He was raised by a likewise unidentified aunt in comfortable circumstances, a fact he later concealed to make his rise from obscurity seem more remarkable. He began work at age 12 in a bookstore for $2 per week while attending public school. He entered the Navy, at age 13 and served 15 months at Norfolk. After leaving the Navy in 1843, he moved to Philadelphia, and worked as a bookshop clerk at age 14. Childs found favor with his employer, proving himself to be trustworthy in business. After shutting the shop for the evening, he was entrusted with buying books at auction for the store. By the time he was 16, he was going to New York and Boston to attend publishing trade shows.
When Childs turned 18, he took his savings, which amounted to several hundred dollars, and leased space in the offices of the Philadelphia Public Ledger and started his own firm.
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This entry incorporates text from “George William Childs” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.